Opaline

Opaline Arcana is a female Alicorn pony in the fifth generation of My Little Pony. She is the main antagonist of the My Little Pony: Make Your Mark series and the first season of My Little Pony: Tell Your Tale. She lives in a castle to the northwest of Maretime Bay, and had a unicorn associate named Misty Brightdawn. In the dubbing credits of the Make Your Mark special, she was credited as "Shadowy Alicorn". She is now defeated and imprisoned in the Chapter 6 episode Roots of All Evil Pt. 2. She is the former boss and the adoptive mother of Misty. Opaline is villainous, sinister, cunning, arrogant, entitled, and confident. She is a serious threat to Equestrian society since she was successful in dividing the nation many moons before My Little Pony: A New Generation. Now that Sunny Starscout and other ponies have figured out how to stabilize magic, she had set her sights on taking back what she believes is rightfully hers. Opaline abhors the ideas of unity and equality, believing that ponies should fear and love the alicorn race, and hopes to rule Equestria as a totalitarian leader. Determined to steal the Prisbeam Magic, Opaline hopes to recover her Alicorn Magic which is hinted to have been taken by the Unity Crystals, created by Twilight Sparkle, leaving her night-depowered.

Opaline's treatment of Misty was emotionally abusive. Although she allowed Misty to reside in her Castle and gives her a purpose, Opaline also treats Misty cruelly and frequently belittles her ward, such as saying that she was nothing without Opaline, so as to keep Misty subservient, along with the promise to bestow Misty a Cutie Mark once she accomplishes her goal of conquering Equestria, but only seems to be using her to fulfill her nefarious schemes. Opaline was also manipulative of others; for instance, she used her magic to appear as Sunny's Inner Mind from her Magical Mirror to encourage her to embrace her alicorn form and realize all the power and greatness that can come of it. She also appeared to have a short temper for failure as she scoffs at the failed plans she had Misty perform to try to accumulate Prisbeam Magic. She was shown to be prone to yelling and becomes angry very easily. Opaline was also greedy and vain, often having trouble understanding how a powerful pony like Sunny does not wish to be an alicorn all the time. She covets magic and desires for all magic in Equestria to belong to her alone. She has considered finding other alicorns like Sunny to be her allies, but quickly dismissed the idea when her plans to take Sunny under her wing became unfeasible to carry out. Opaline was shown to be willing to use violence against other ponies and creatures to achieve her goals, although direct confrontation is not her primary strategy. She was seen attacking Fluttershy in public, unconcerned with the legal or ethical consequences. She little thought of harming others even in the current day and has ordered Misty to commit a number of potentially violent crimes including unlawful imprisonment, breaking and entering, and kidnapping. One of Opaline's darkest actions was artificially creating a living mouse before coldly destroying it once it had achieved its mission, despite Misty's protests against such an act.

Opaline's jealousy ran deep from the time when she was a filly when Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were fillies as well. Jealous of the attention the pair got calling them the 'golden ponies' and thinking they were much better than her cause of their magic to raise the sun and moon, creating her drive to show them she was not to be underestimated and fulfill her own elemental duty. It is shown that Opaline lacks empathy as she declines when both Misty and Sunny attempts to reach out to her by commenting that the reason she is evil is due to how she never experienced having any friends, but Opaline denies their claims, proving she knew the difference between right or wrong, yet she chose to do evil on her own choices. Opaline was a slim, magenta-purple-coated Alicorn, with her chest being noticeably colored in a slightly lighter shade. She possesses almond-shaped deep-ocean eyes, long thick eyelashes, arched black brows, deep-ocean hooves, and dons makeup consisting of glittery-blue eyeshadow and angled mascara. Her most distinctive feature is her silver-white mane and tail with various thin streaks of cyan-green. Her main is also shoulder-length, and is part into two side sections, with small braids around her ears holding the hairstyle. Her hairstyle also resulted into the parts of her mane being left down forming a tapering spiral pattern that makes it appear thicker by her shoulders. As for her cutie mark, it consists of a violet-magenta horn having an inscribed transparent rhombus, and accompanying it are two, cyan-blue flames on the side that resemble wings. Opaline was much taller than the other ponies, which is specifically shown when standing next to Misty.

As per being her pony type, she possessed a long, slightly curved horn with the tip being colored in a slightly paler shade, along with a pair of large, retractable feathered-wings with a violet-to-magenta gradient approaching the wingtips. Opaline's only choice of clothing was that of metallic, emerald-green cuffs on the ankles of all four of her hooves. The front of each cuff vaguely resembles that of a unicorn head with feather-like spikes, with both the pegasi and unicorn imagery in its accessories referred to its status as a true alicorn. When using unicorn magic, the air around her horn glows neon violet. After Misty retrieves Sparky's fire breath, unsuccessfully capturing the dragon itself, Opaline consumed the dragon breath, the entirety of her horn and wings produced multicolored fire and her metallic hoof cuffs turned into a vivid cyan. The visual effects of such power lasted only moments, and eventually its appearances returned to normal. After consuming a large amount of dragon fire from Sparky, Opaline's horn and wings produced bright and powerful fire, possessing a gradient color scheme consisting of shades of cyan-blue, white and purple. The streaks of her mane glowed a brighter cyan, and her neck, down to her chest, has some noticeable glowing assents, implying that the dragon fire now runs through the inside of her body, most likely her veins. In Tell Your Tale, Opaline's legs looked stockier and her mane and tail are wavier in appearance, possibly because of the more simplistic art style. Opaline may have been born an alicorn or became one later in life, but she possessed at least her horn during ancient Equestrian times. In a confrontation with Fluttershy, she implied that she was a unicorn and had not shown wings; this suggests that she could have either been born a unicorn or an alicorn. Her flashback in the episode Sunny Side Up reveals she was an alicorn since she was a filly, the same as Princess Celestia and Princess Luna.

Like other alicorns, Opaline was capable of very powerful magic, far more than any Unicorn. Her flying and earth ponies abilities are not shown much likely equally as powerful. Initially, her magic was 'compromised' and she had been confined to her Castle, determined to find the source of her lost power to become whole again. But after obtaining dragon-fire magic, she managed to regain enough of her powers to be overpowering Sunny Starscout's Alicorn form before Sunny got help from her friend's cutie mark magic. Due to her magic, Opaline's lifespan was far longer than ordinary ponies as she has been alive since at least the reign of Twilight Sparkle (which was stated by Argyle Starshine to have been ten generations past). In Chapter 4, it is revealed she was a filly at the same time as Princess Celestia and Princess Luna which means her lifespan is similar to theirs - more than 1,000 years. Before the full restoration of her power, Opaline was still formidable with her magic ability from her home in the Dark Castle. She has a magic projector that allows her to observe the rest of Equestria through a bird's eye view. She also had a magic cauldron that can do everything from creating rare plants from nothing and even synthesizing animal life. She was capable of bewitching many items such as ever-burning torches to light her Castle and mirrors to allow her to spy on her enemies and even communicate with them better than modern cell phones. As a result, Opaline does not keep any semblance of modern technology in her castle, as she likely has no need for it. Opaline was convinced that a number of sources could restore her full power. Key among them are Sunny's own alicorn magic, the Prisbeam magic of the Unity Crystals, Sunny's magic lantern, and Sparky's magic dragon fire. After obtaining a small breath of dragon fire, her magical power was shown to become increased, but only for about a minute before returning to normal.

Even without her magic, Opaline was a force to be reckoned with. She was intelligent and clever, devising a number of plans to chip away at Equestria's social fabric. She rarely ever engaged directly with her enemies, allowing the havoc of her influence to proceed her. She prefers to know everything about a situation before making a definitive move. Despite yearning for attention and admiration, she conceded that working from the shadows was her best approach. Opaline was once an Alicorn filly growing up in the realm of Skyros. Her jealously has been running deep from the time she was a filly when both the Royal Sisters, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were also fillies at the time. Because they were both capable of controlling the sun and moon respectively, which made them quite popular. At some point, she tried to make friends with them, but only to be snubbed by them causing Opaline to grow and become resentful and needs the time that she shouldn't be underestimated. In the end of Make Your Mark, Opaline is first introduced after the void storm in Maretime Bay. She observed the events with Misty via a magical projector in her castle. Upon seeing that Magic had stabilized after many Moons of dormancy and instability, Opaline declared it was time to put her plans into motion.

In Izzy Does It, Opaline tasks Misty with spying on the Mane 5 to observe their newly acquired magic so that she can eventually take it from them, and she schemes to find a way to see inside the Crystal Brighthouse. In Growing Pains, she intermittently spies on Sunny via a magic compact mirror Misty left for her in the previous episode. In Portrait of a Princess, she tasks Misty with luring Pipp Petals and Zipp Storm into a trap in order to get rid of them. In Ali-Conned, after Misty's trap in the previous episode fails, Opaline pretends to be Sunny's inner voice and pressures her (via her magic compact) to embrace her Alicorn status and command respect and adoration from other ponies. In The Cutie Mark Mix-Up, Opaline uses her magic to create an artificial mouse-like critter and sends it to sneak into the Crystal Brighthouse and find the source of the ponies' harmony magic, eventually discovering that the Mane 5 channels the Unity Crystals' power through Sunny's magic lantern. In The Traditional Unicorn Sleep-Over, Opaline tasks Misty with infiltrating the Mane 5's group so that she can steal the lantern. This episode also reveals how Opaline first rose to power during the age of ancient Equestria and that Princess Twilight Sparkle shielded all of Equestria in a magic bubble to keep Opaline out. In Hoof Done It?, after Misty fails to steal Sunny's lantern, Opaline sets her sights on Sparky and her magic dragon fire. In Have You Seen This Dragon?, Misty fails to kidnap Sparky but obtains a small amount of his dragon fire, which Opaline absorbs to become a "Fire Alicorn".